Tag Archives: Internet

A quick update to my article list for silicon.com – an article explaining why the shift to cloud computing may take longer than CIOs think. Along with the familiar barriers to cloud adoption, such as security and vendor lock-in, there are a number of less obvious challenges giving some CIOs pause for thought:

Listen to the vendors and on-demand computing is presented as an unstoppable force that is set to change technology provision quickly and irrevocably.

Check the research and that representation certainly appears credible, with analyst house IDC estimating that companies spend £10.7bn a year on cloud IT services worldwide and that the market will be worth £27bn by 2013. But while the numbers might sound impressive, IT leaders wishing to transfer services to the cloud face significant challenges.

Executives rapidly discover a dark side to the cloud, where concepts of on-demand technology are confused, trust is constrained and understanding is limited. “I find the whole debate about cloud as interesting as the debate about service-oriented architecture,” says Stuart Curley, chief technology architect at the Royal Mail. “It doesn’t keep me awake at night but it does send me to sleep.”

I haven’t updated my blog for a while, so I thought I’d use readily available child labour and get my oldest daughter to pen a contribution. She is obsessed with dinosaurs; completely obsessed. So, we used this web site, where she could add words and automatically create a story. And here is big sister’s final work:

One day Dino decided to go for a walk. It was a sunny day and the earth was especially terrible.

Dino was really happy and was thinking about Pterodactyl. He noticed a T Rex in the volcano. Then he saw that the T Rex was heading for the bush. Dino got very scared when he saw the T Rex coming with a dead dinosaur.

So he went to a barbecue and he had no money. As Dino was walking his luck had turned. He was trembling with a Triceratops when he decided to go into the bushes. It was then that Dino saw a Parasaurolophus and the volcano. And he thought it’s time for lunch.

He found some treasure and he liked to play. For dessert he had pumpkin and squash. He then went outside and began to dream about a crocodile. Oh, Dino thought, another dream.

I’ve been on holiday for the past week. Well, I say holiday – I live in London and we visited Leigh-on-Sea for a few hours one day. The main point is that I haven’t been at work. And during that time away from my desk, a piece I wrote on the social CIO for silicon.com was published. The piece suggests that not enough IT chiefs are championing social media and collaboration:

There might be 500 million Facebook users around the globe but that still leaves almost six and a half billion non-users. What lies behind such figures is a broader socio-economic change. The number of people using Facebook has doubled year-on-year and the up-and-coming cadre ofyounger employees expect to use social technologies in the workplace.

Such expectations create significant challenges for the executive team. The CIO, as the individual with responsibility for organisational IT, should be at the apex of that challenge. That, however, is not necessarily the case.

Summer’s recently released CIO Connect magazine featured a profile interview with Deloitte UK partner and CIO Mary Hensher, a people person with a passion for the potential of IT to change business. The feature covered the following areas:

Deloitte UK CIO Mary Hensher is only too aware of the fact that she remains a scarcity amongst the rarefied air of UK business leadership; a woman with a responsibility for technology at a leading firm.

There is hope that the balance will once again shift towards women, and that hope comes in the form of social media: “Technology used to be anti-social; now it’s social,” says Hensher, referring to the increasing prevalence of collaborative technology.

“You need pioneers to prove that new models of working are possible,” says Hensher. “Part-time employment will not work in every job but IT should be more accommodating. Employees need to be as flexible as they can. A good working relationship can make new models work.”

Information is everything. It is crucial that a central core of IT experts are retained in-house to ensure that client data is secure: “We can’t afford ignorance and managing secure data is essential,” says Hensher.

Hensher says issues of security and mobility come together and create concerns around connectivity: “The challenge is to connect your people effectively,” she says.

This isn’t an online dating exercise, but it is a call for more men. Me and some of my middle-aged mates play in a 5-a-side league in Wanstead on a Sunday evening. We are, in short, rubbish.

There are only six teams in the league at present. However, it’s pretty professional – games are arranged and results displayed on our own league web site. It’s not only the set-up that’s professional, either. Some of the teams are mustard – The Unknows (who caned us twice) are basically semi-professional. They are everything we are not: fast, energetic and talented.

We managed to win two games all season. The first was a stunning 5-2 victory over fellow strugglers League of Asians. Our second win – an unexpected 10-0 triumph – came last weekend as the result of a no-show. That sneaky tactic lifted us to the glories of fifth (and in the Premier League, that would be an automatic Europe League place).

But this isn’t the Premier League, it’s the Sylvestrian Football League. And we stink. Still, there is hope – and a new round of games is set to begin in just two weeks. By way of a season round-up, special mention must go to the following players:

Adrian Mason – Essex boy that bangs on endlessly about a volley he scored earlier in the season

Greg Demetriou – Late starter; scores regularly but always picks up an injury

Mark Samuels – Another late starter; scores very, very infrequently

Ben Lock – Specialist in ankle injuries

Niall Magennis – Fellow IT journalist with a mean line in tackling

Cathal O’Donoghue – Good at missing the middle part of the season, basically

Kevin Malone – Mysteriously absent for later matches

If you’re in Wanstead and want to get stuffed at football, check out the league web site – matches are on a Sunday evening and your team is almost guaranteed two wins against the Villa (Wanstead, not Aston).

The summer 2010 edition of CIO Connect should be hitting IT leaders’ desks this week. Cover star is Deloitte UK partner and CIO Mary Hensher, a people person with a passion for the potential of IT to change business. Other articles include cloud computing, innovation, governance and a review of IT leadership from India.

As ever, thanks to all the CIOs, business leaders and technology experts who contributed their time and opinions. Below is a full list of featured participants:

Mary Hensher, Deloitte UK partner and CIO

Richard McGrail, head of IT at Baillie Gifford & Co

Steve Webster, IT director at Admiral Group

Peter Ingram, IT director at Addison Lee

Martin Ferguson, head of strategy at Socitm

David Hopkins, manager of business development at Siemens Enterprise Services

David Wilde, head of IT at Westminster City Council

Patrick Smith, local government client executive at IBM

Richard Mahony, director of telecoms research and analysis at Ovum

Philip Virgo, secretary general of the European Information Society Group

It is a key question for IT leaders thinking of dabbling in on-demand computing provision through the cloud. For Bassill, there is only one answer, particularly for firms operating in highly regulated sectors: “A lot of companies fear the auditor more. If you hold data internally, you can show the auditor your controls, but the cloud makes such demonstrations more difficult.”

The resulting complications mean many businesses still shy away from on-demand IT. About 40% of UK companies use cloud computing systems, according to the Information Systems Audit and Control Association. This represents a significant proportion of British organisations, but implementation levels – certainly with regards to large-scale enterprise systems – are nowhere near matching the cacophonous intensity of supplier hype.

Apologies if you’ve visited this site during the last couple of weeks and found that, well, not very much has changed. I’ve been on paternity leave, following the birth of my second daughter Jemima on 8th April. It’s back to work on Monday, so I’ll make sure to keep the site fresh.

At home, all is well. Mummy is recovering and Lily is coping with being a big sister. Thanks to all for your best wishes.

My wife knows nothing about technology. She doesn’t have a Facebook account and watching her search the web is more frustrating than watching Aston Villa fail to score in four successive Premier League matches.

She cares nothing for the bits and bytes of technology, like much of the world (an oft forgotten detail). But she did mention that she’d heard Apple had released some new technology.

“The Apple iPad,” I said, recognising that while she cares nothing for Steve Jobs’ latest device, she is equally unable to avoid media hype. The iPad – depending on your chosen review – is either a big phone, the greatest innovation ever (since the last Apple innovation, anyway) or the saviour of the publishing industry. Such hype suggests we’re all about to start reading books and papers on our iPads ; my wife’s response to that suggestion?

“Reading is all about relaxing, so why would anyone choose to read a computer screen?”

Quite (now get your own Facebook account and stop using mine to connect with your mates).

The nature of work has changed. Want proof? Search LinkedIn and see how many people choose to define their job role with what might previously have been seen as non-traditional, even esoteric, terms:

4,475,626 results for owner

3,677,739 results for consultant

1,911,106 results for specialist

537,068 results for advisor

469,201 results for founder

468,044 results for expert

405,901 results for freelance

398,420 results for contractor

365,215 results for writer

138,506 results for speaker

84,840 results for strategist

61,032 results for ambassador

50,013 results for thinker

45,848 results for visionary

42,614 results for guru

20,318 results for blogger

16,270 results for evangelist

4,582 results for entreprenuer

3,094 results for gatekeeper

1,637 results for futurist

Old favourites – like freelance and contractor – are still popular. At the start of the last decade, such descriptions were seen as being catch-all phrases for individuals operating at the fringes of the formal economy and providing an outsourced service to larger businesses.

Twenty years ago, futurologists predicted something called ‘the internet’ would allow us to all work flexibly. Now, in a new economy driven by collaborative technologies, freelancing has become the mainstream. A global economy of contractors is fast-developing, with individuals selling their expertise on-demand.

Old monikers – such as freelance and contractor – do not necessarily encapsulate the act of work. The result is a collection of meaningful/meaningless terms that are used to describe what people actually do, or would like to do.

I wonder how the table will develop as the economy changes? Feel free to suggest other esoteric descriptions.